The infrastructure behind the camera

Our clients are production companies, directors, DOPs, line producers, fixers and agencies — most of them arriving from Europe for a feature, a commercial, a documentary or branded content.

They bring the vision, the creative team and usually the camera package. We bring everything that has to already be on the ground when they land: the location and its permissions, the trucks, the wardrobe rail, the makeup mirror, the generator, and the crew who know the road.

The distinction matters commercially. We are not a competitor to the production company we are serving, we do not pitch against them, and we have no creative agenda on their project. We are a supplier, and we behave like one.

Unit Base Arabia is a brand of Ibtikar Al-Hulool, a company registered in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia with a commercial registration, a VAT number and the ability to contract and invoice internationally.

That matters more than it sounds. A production accountant settling a foreign shoot needs a compliant tax invoice, a named legal counterparty and a bank account that clears — not a WhatsApp number and a cash request. Our paperwork is designed to pass an audit, because on productions of this size it will be audited.

We work to your paperwork, not ours. Call sheets, movement orders, risk assessments and schedules come from your production office and we read them. Our crew turn up to your call time and take direction from your ADs.

You get one named contact for the whole job, and that person is reachable on the shoot day rather than only in office hours. If something breaks at 04:30 in the Empty Quarter, the person who answers the phone already knows your schedule.

We quote in detail, line by line, so you can see what is a fixed cost and what moves with the day count. We would rather lose a job on an honest number than win it on one that has to be revised on week two.

Desert and remote work carries real risk, and we treat it that way. Remote units run to a convoy protocol with satellite communications, recovery capability and a medical plan sized to how far the nearest hospital actually is.

We carry insurance appropriate to the work and can provide certificates for your production's own policy checks. Heat, water and shade planning for crew are part of the quote in summer, not an afterthought.

We also reinstate what we use. Sites are photographed before and after, waste leaves with us, and damage is reported rather than discovered. That is what keeps a location available to the next production — and to us.